Dreyfoos Supporters Fight To Hang On To Teachers

Parents Are Asked To Pay $465 A Student To Keep Programs.

January 29, 2005|By Lois K. Solomon Education Writer

Concerned that the county's premier arts academy soon will become just "a regular high school," supporters of Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach want to raise $600,000 to retain 10 arts teachers set to lose their jobs.

The foundation that supports the arts school is asking parents to pay $465 a student to maintain the visual arts, dance, theatre, music and communications programs that have made the downtown school a prestigious destination for talented students.

The 10 potentially lost teachers at Dreyfoos amount to half of the school's arts faculty. A secretary and theatre manager also could lose their jobs.

"It starts to look a lot like a regular high school when you lose a lot of the specialty arts classes," parent Claudia Epstein of Boca Raton said. "It's a shame it has to come to this, but I'm perfectly willing to do it to maintain the programs."

The school's foundation has asked parents to pony up before, requesting $375 last year and $325 the previous year. But planners expect the funding crisis to worsen because of the voter-approved state class-size amendment, which requires a reduction in class sizes in core subjects, such as math and science.

Schools have to use their own money to hire more teachers in those subjects, which often means fewer teachers of electives.

Bak Middle School of the Arts in West Palm Beach is not facing similar cuts, Principal Elizabeth Perlman said.

Although most schools still are working on their budgets for next year, many are likely to face shortages due to inadequate funding from the state, school district spokesman Nat Harrington said. "Any reduced services are the direct result of what the state gives us," Harrington said. "We're managing scarcity."

Several Palm Beach County schools have had to reduce arts classes in the past few years to pay for teachers in core subjects. But in the current school year, there have been no art teacher cuts, said Tom Pearson, the school district's arts planner. Four elementary school art teachers had to give up their classrooms, though, to make room for academic classes as part of the class-size amendment, he said.

When Dreyfoos parents were asked to raise $450,000 last year and $200,000 the previous year, parents gave about half the money, while donors proffered the rest, foundation executive director Pat Montesino said.

The foundation, created to supplement the curriculum with artists-in-residence and money for trips and costumes, is being steered into a new role as fund-raiser for lost teachers, Montesino said.

"To have to raise $600,000 year after year is very unfair," parent Mollie Bowers of Wellington said. "It's upsetting that the school district is not maintaining the program when we worked so hard to get national credentials."

Lois Solomon can be reached at lsolomon@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6536.